Overview

An old building on Harquahala Mountain, northwest of Phoenix, Arizona, was once a site for a major program of the Smithsonian Institution. In the early 1920s, observers there aimed a variety of instruments at the sun to gather data and calculate what they thought were daily changes in the sun's energy. At the height of operations on Harquahala, once a value for the sun's energy was determined, the observers phoned the data down to a merchant in Wenden near the base of the mountain; the merchant walked over to the local railroad depot and had the data telegraphed to Washington, D.C. Then, scientist at the Smithsonian transmitted the daily values to a private meteorologist in Canton, Mass. The Harquahala site was part of a worldwide effort by Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot, director of the Institution's Astrophysical Observatory, to establish weather forecasting that would be meaningful to...

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9781453871768

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Pete Burggraaf lives in Wickenburg, Arizona. Retired, he reads and writes about Southwest U.S. history, collects prickly-pear cacti, and enjoys long walks and traveling.

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